Commiserating with Compensators

Posted on 22 Mar 2012 @ 10:26pm by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & Command Master Chief Markum Quinn

2,464 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 00 - Pre-Deployment
Location: USS Galileo, Deck 7, Various
Timeline: MD 06 - 1030 hrs

[ON]

As Lilou slithered down the tight access crawlway along the EPS relay route, she wondered - not for the first time - if all the crewmen and officers who weren't in the Engineering department actually realized how brave they were. Not for the jobs they knew they had - they could think whatever they liked about those, she didn't really care - but for the simple fact that they were wandering around this starship, putting their things in order and doing the little things they did to prepare for the voyage, all without any evidence to support the conviction that the ship would actually do what they told it to. How many of them had actually even paid attention in the two or three classes in basic engineering they'd been required to take? And even if they had... they still probably couldn't comprehend how complex and magnificent the ship around them really was. And even if they could... they wouldn't know how it worked. Or how it didn't. And that, in Lilou's mind, was courage to the point of fool-hardiness.

Take, for example, the EPS manifold system she was now inspecting, according to Quinn's detailed Fix-It list. The relatively small crew was churning about the decks, simply trusting that everything worked just fine just because it had been approved for launch. It was a matter of faith. And they could do so, because there were faithless, detail-oriented engineers on board to make sure - or at least do their best to make sure - that they didn't all explode or transform into jumbled gelatinous goo.

She flattened herself inside the shaft, pulling her PADD up to a few inches from her nose - the farthest it could be in the available area of this part of the crawlspace. The electro-plasma had been re-routed through the impulse manifolds temporarily, but that couldn't continue for very long. It would cause an overload, eventually, that would either black out the entire system - leaving them potentially without life-support or defense systems - or knock the relay system out of alignment and cause even worse problems. Eventually. The trouble was, with the way the system was constantly in flux - antimatter wasn't exactly the most stable fuel source one could imagine - it was hard to make an accurate guess as to how long they had beyond a certain point. Which meant putting the problem off until they reached a starbase was out of the question.

The PADD showed her the same data she'd seen on the MSD in Main Engineering, no changes. With a little grunt, she stowed it in a pouch attached to her left thigh and fished out a hyperspanner to open a small panel directly above her and reveal the electro-plasma matrix running alongside the optical data lines that networked the details of the plasma flow into the computer database. Reaching into a similar, but larger pouch strapped to her right leg, she withdrew a long metal coil with a small gel pad on the end of it and, holding the far end of the coil, she held the gel sensor right beside the EPS. The readings matched those she'd seen on the PADD, but it was worth having checked the whole line. She'd never quite gotten around to trusting one set of permanent sensors, although these seemed to be reliable enough. This time.

Stowing the coil, she replaced the panel above her, secured it, and pulled out her PADD again. So it wasn't a false read, which meant... she should start getting abnormal readings as she crawled closer to the primary taps. Twisting her head, she rested her PADD on her stomach and shimmied on her back, almost gracefully with a sort of backstroke motion, until she reached the next access panel. Sure enough, the readings here were elevated, and as she continued shimmying and collecting readings along the access route, her data matched right along what she'd expected. Which was lovely, except it didn't help her solve the problem.

As she reached the area of the access route where she could follow it out into the rest of the ship or directly to the main matrix, she chewed her lower lip. The core wasn't the issue; she was ninety percent sure that that had been checked nine or ten times at the very least. She'd taken a look at it herself before she'd begun her slithering journey through the access crawlspace and, according to her PADD and the readouts of the inordinate number of sensors attached to the data points around the core, there was still no issue there. No. The issue wasn't at the source, but in the organization of the relays which meant...

She lifted a brow, inputting a stream of information from memory into her PADD and watched the screen light up, tables flickering rapidly as new datapoints were added to the matrix. It was a reasonable hypothesis, if nothing else. She tapped her comm. "Peers to Engineering. Chief, you around?"

Quinn was dangling half in-half out of the Waverider's ladder-equipped hard umbilical connection. "Peers, your timing is perfect. What?"

"I've been re-checking the relays to make sure the EPS imbalance you observed wasn't due to false reads on the ODN. Everything's reading true in here, but I had a thought. Has anyone checked the phase compensator? It's possible that the phase margin is out of line; if an incorrect amount of the phase shift is being subtracted from the signal directed by the compensator, the computer may automatically be redirecting the EPS from its prescribed route to avoid an over-amplification. I'd like to pop in there and do a system scan, make sure the circuit's aligned properly. What do you think?"

Quinn could be heard through the com yelling at a another engineer, "Willis, does this look like a hydrospanner?" Then a sound of several metallic clangs echoed in the background. "Sure Peers, just don't break anything that you can't fix. Also, remember while you're bellied up to the phase compensator to adjust your tricorder to compensate for the high induction of plasma feeding in from the plasma manifold. Trust me, that's one mess you do not want to clean up."

Lilou emitted a little snort of mirth, "You got it, Chief. I'll let you know what I see down there. Good luck, sir."

With a glove in his hand the Chief Engineer gave a muffled answer, "mummfff wammmff..."

Slipping her PADD back into its holster, she twisted around a corner and began the process of climbing down ladder rungs in the tight space deeper into the belly of the ship following the main taps until she reached the correct section of the shaft. The entire access area up and down the latter was thrumming from the power of the engine just beside it. Busy little bee. Hooking her foot through the ladder rungs, she unhooked a miniature maglock from her belt and opened the access panel, attaching the removed panel to the side of the access shaft temporarily, and crawling in through the narrow hatch. The phase adjustment coil was just one small ring around the immense warp engine that towered above and below her in the otherwise empty space. She took a moment for herself there to simply appreciate the beauty of the technology at work. When the moment passed, she hooked her self-ratcheting clamp into the base hook of the ladder and climbed all the way through the hatch until she was hanging on the inside of the warp shaft. Pushing out with her legs all the way onto her tip-toes, she stretched horizontally across the exceedingly long drop and ended up using a stretch of binding cord to pull herself across to the phase adjustment coil.

Carefully, on her knees on the grate that encircled the coil, she drew her tricorder from her right leg gear holster and adjusted it to Quinn's specifications. "All right," she muttered to herself, "let's see what's got you in a mood, hm?" She scanned the data readout and frowned. Readjusted her inquiry and frowned again. "I see. Well, I can't blame you, ma'am. I'd be irritable if my phase shift was being subtracted without being added to in equal share, too. Let's see if we can correct that compensation circuit of yours. Shall we?"

She hunkered down, rolling her wrists a couple times until they cracked pleasantly, and bent to her work. With an eye on the tricorder, she gently removed the bottom plate of the phase adjuster attached to the coil and bent her head to peer up inside of it. The optic cables in the control loop hadn't been properly secured and had shifted just enough so they weren't making proper contact to redirect the system compensation. She glanced at the tricorder readout again and carefully rearranged the cables so that they connected at a phase margin of fifty-two degrees. "Computer," she tapped her comm. "Run a diagnostic on EPS routing with the current phase compensator adjustment."

"Electro-plasma system route adjustment has been sent to your PADD, Warrant Officer."

"Thank you," she said sincerely and finagled her PADD out where she could see it... and... yes! She grinned. "Peers to Engineering. Chief, just a glitch with the cables in the compensator. I'm sending the route adjustment with current specifications to your PADD. Give me the go-ahead and I'll patch her up."

Quinn replied while crawling under the Waverider on his back, "Hang-on, hang-on. It's wedged...wait....rrrrrrrr....Here it is. Okay." It suddenly got quiet for a brief moment. Then with a sigh from Quinn, and a chuckle in the back ground from Petty Officer Willis, "Go shove an ODN cable in your mouth Willis. Good job Peers. You got lucky. I umm, I should of figured it would be something simple. Now, if you want me to be proud of you, fix it and do it right the first time, then find your way out again." Willis, in the background was in a full fit of laughter. "I...told you....she'd....fix it...." Quinn looked back at Willis. "ODN cable Willis! Keep me posted Peers."

"Sure thing, Chief!" Lilou smiled up into the phase compensator, purring, "Hear that, sweet thing? We're going to get you all sorted out. Don't you worry." Another burst of Willis' laughter came through the con and she flushed. "Ah... right. Peers out." She tapped her comm, disconnecting, her cheeks stinging. 'Way to look smart in front of your superior officer, Lil,' she thought, rolling her eyes. There was a quiet bleep and whirr from the phase compensator. "It's okay, honey, give me a second." No use taking out her embarrassment on a perfectly innocent data circuit. A few minutes and a few carefully doled out microdrops of nanopoxy later, the circuit was good as new. Well, to be fair, it was new as of now, really. She closed her eyes and counted down from ten as her cheeks cooled. "Computer," she murmured. "Show me the relay routing as of now."

"Current electro-plasma system route has been sent to your PADD, Warrant Officer."

"Thank you," she said, checking her PADD again. All clear. Fantastic. Gently, she reattached the base plate over the compensator circuit and shimmied back towards the edge of the phase coil grate, carefully lowering herself back to the outside edge of the cavity with the still looped binding cord and crawling back into the access crawlway. With a foot hooked into the ladder, she leaned out and soaked in the vibrant energy pulsing around the engine. "I'll be back," she promised, "just please don't give me a reason to." With that, she used the maglock to resecure the hatch access and climbed back up into the crawlway. Her skin was still buzzing from the close proximity to the warp engine at maximum, continuing to twitch and buckle the whole way back to the corridor hatch. In the corridor, she rolled out and paused, scrubbing her hands together to get them to stop vibrating. She heard a couple awkward coughs and looked up, this time to see a pair of officers staring at her curiously.

She could imagine what they saw - a short girl, her uniform askew from the crawling and climbing, belts and pouches strapped every which way, crouching on the floor and acting like she was trying to start a fire with her hands. She probably looked crazy. Joy.

She stretched her arms up over her head, cracked her neck twice, and reattached the access hatch, ignoring them studiously as she strode down the corridor back to Engineering. As she passed through the door, it was like coming home. Not even a full day and she knew exactly where she belonged. That was nice. Absent-mindedly, she made a vague attempt at righting herself as she crossed into the repair bay.

She found Petty Officer Willis smirking at the underbelly of a Waverider. "Did it tell you a joke?" she asked wryly before she heard the tell-tale sounds of someone working on the inside.

"Did the compensator kiss you goodbye?"

"That and more," Lilou remarked dryly. "My lips are sealed." She hunkered down next to the Waverider, "Chief? Doing all right in there? Need anything?"

"Peers?" he could be heard as he tried to mumble to himself, "Man she is fast. The power is still on so I take it you didn't break anything. Yeah, I do. I need a new Petty Officer that keeps his trap shut!" Willis gave a 'who, me?' look and started laughing as he went to wash his hands.

"I'm done here, and I'm hungry. That means you get to buy lunch Peers, and I could eat the entire nacelle of a Galaxy-Class." As he slid out from under his newest project he chuckled a bit at the sight before him. "You llok like you actually did some work, Peers. That's how my engineers should look while on duty. If you aren't dirty, you aren't workin." He gave a friendly wink, then looked to Willis, "Yo, Willis, you're in charge while we go get some chow." Willis gave a wave and walked away. Then Quinn turned back to Peers, "The problem is, he always thinks he's in charge. Let's go grab some chow."

Lilou nodded, beaming. He didn't look all that spic and span himself, which made her feel inordinately better as she followed him out into the corridor. She glanced over her shoulder as the doors closed on Willis whistling. Her stomach rumbled ominously, churning on itself. "Your will is my command, Chief."

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OFF

Master Warrant Officer Lilou Peers
Engineering Officer
USS Galileo

Chief Warrant Officer Markum Quinn
Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

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